- Congregation Beth El–Keser Israel
85 Harrison Street, New Haven, CT 06515-1724 | P: 203.389.2108 | office@beki.org
85 Harrison Street, New Haven, CT 06515-1724 | P: 203.389.2108 | office@beki.org
…or bat-mitzva? Signed, Davening to Know Dear Davening, At BEKI minors (pre-benei-mitzva youth) are allowed, indeed encouraged, to read Torah (with some exceptions and reservations). This is not the case in most communities because generally children do not know how to read Torah or because it is an honor reserved for adults, not as a matter of law but as social etiquette. There is no legal barrier to minors reading Torah or having an aliya (again…
…Jewish children with learning differences, in Philadelphia for 2 years. Mike is a California Land Use Attorney who works on various planning, zoning, and entitlement issues for clients in Southern California. Lisa and Mike moved to Woodbridge in mid-2022 and are enjoying “country” living and taking their granddaughters back and forth to school, shul, and home, and entertaining their grandsons from Washington, DC (think choo-choo trains, Legos, and…
…e Ely House, Center for Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, and has curated a number of independent exhibitions. She studied at the Akademie fuer Angewante Kunst in Vienna, Austria, and received her MFA from San Jose State University. Anna Broell Bresnick has collaborated with dancers and musicians in the creation of installations for performances. These have included large sculptural str uctures, floor drawings and video. Broell Bresnick has taught…
…one tale, for example, the Besht goes out of his way traveling to meet face-to-face with a doctor who had sworn to shoot him.7 In the story about the priest noted above, the Besht takes the initiative, and is careful to confront the problem, and not the person per se. But the dangers of using confrontational tactics for purposes other than reconciliation are suggested in a case in which a decree of martyrdom had been issued in heaven against a cer…
…Thus I am pleased to report to you that, though long overdue, the shul’s 40-year-old underground heating oil storage tanks were removed this past fall without incident. There had been no leaks. In this we were lucky since their life expectancies had long since expired. However, the tanks are just the beginning. Their removal sensitized us to the critical need to continue renovating our entire heating and cooling infrastructure. Our furnace is anci…
…04 p. 7): “Manischewitz Chocolate Coins (‘OU-Pareve’) bear the words: ‘In G-d We Trust.’ A number of leading rabbonim have Paskened that one may not eat them nor throw away the chocolate and wrappers, if they too have those words. Consult your rabbi.” So rabbi, I am consulting you. What should I do if we have those coins? Signed, In R-bbi We Trust Dear Trust, Our halakha (law) holds that there are five basic Hebrew names of the Almighty that are s…
…omeone holding a Torah that is not entitled “Rabbi.” We also noted that non-Ashkenazi Jews are under-represented. There are two wonderful prints of watercolors of Yemenite Jewish men by the Romanian-Israeli artist David Gilboa, and the previously mentioned work by Rafael Avraham Shalem, and many ethnically ambiguous works, but in general this is an exhibition with many exclusions. Additionally, only three works in the exhibition were created by wo…
…, the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. The service provided by the phone company allows people unable to visit the Wall in person to fax their petitions to an agent who then carefully inserts the sheets into cracks between the stones. But you don’t even need a fax machine to reach God. Our sages valued sincerity in prayer above all else. Length, language, or location are secondary considerations. Better a few words from the heart than the…
…and I didn’t feel invisible anymore. One day I was speaking with my brother-in-law on the phone. I was talking about BEKI (which by this time I had joined) and the feeling that I have here. And I confided in him that one day I’d like to get up on the bima and read from the Torah. And as I said these words I began to tremble. The very thought was overpowering to me. To even think of myself as playing such an honored role among Jews seemed so bold….
…your fellow loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent (Deut. 22:1-4). “You must not remain indifferent.” The root, ayin, lamed, mem, means to hide, to conceal. In this verse, the verb is in the reflexive form, so it means you must not hide yourself, and by extension, it means you mustn’t ignore or run away from your neighbor’s needs. If you see someone’s beast of burden fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must help him raise it. Th…
